Anna Balakian

In the following essay, Balakian discusses André Breton's disregard for artificial stimulants in favor of the "natural intoxicants" of the human mind and the use he made of this belief in the development of his surrealism.

Agreeing with Baudelaire that every man had a powerhouse of natural intoxicants. André Breton made of this hypothesis the apex of surrealism.

Instances of his personal disapproval1 of all artificial stimulants can be found in the pages of Entretiens, 1913-1952,avec André Parinaud (Paris: Gallimard, 1952) and in other personal accounts of his own and of his friends' experimental activities in the field of the expansion of consciousness. His quarrels with Artaud and Desnos stemmed largely from...